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"I used to sit around and think about ways to make money. None of these ways were very promising." Poet Suzanne Lummis reminisces before reading "Ways to Make Money #1," published in the December 2013 issue of Spillway magazine. Lummis is the cofounder and director of the Los Angeles Poetry Festival.
It's easy to get bogged down by the ideas behind the poem you are writing, losing sight of the harmonic structure of the words themselves and the rhythm of lines and pauses. This week, chose a poem that you love and memorize it. Say it to yourself over and over again, until it escapes the page and makes a home in your body. Try not to think about how the poet would want it to sound—concentrate instead on how it sounds in your voice, how it inhabits you. Once you get comfortable with the process, try this with your own poems.
Charles Bukowski's poem "Roll the Dice" is the inspiration for this film by Willem Martinot. Read by Tom O'Bedlam and set to music by Tony Anderson, the poem serves as a reminder that if something is important to us, it is worth going all the way.
Nineteenth-century poet Walter Savage Landor's "On Love, on Grief" packs a punch in its brief simplicity: "On love, on grief, on every human thing, / Time sprinkles Lethe's water with his wing." Not only is the poem sonically beautiful, it also takes a cliché (time flies) and transforms it. As writers, we may occasionally stumble upon phrases or situations we want to write that are considered cliché. This week, take one of the clichés you often feel drawn to and try to refresh it.
"There's nothing I can tell you that you don't already know." Leah Browning's meditative poem "There's Nothing" is portrayed in this clip from Poetry Storehouse. Browning's third chapbook, In the Chair Museum, was published by Dancing Girl Press in 2013.
In this clip, poet Bianca Stone combines poetry, music, and art, telling a story through the deconstruction of her own drawings. Stone is the author of Someone Else’s Wedding Vows (Tin House/Octopus Books, 2014).
In Contre Sainte Beuve, Marcel Proust writes: "In reality, as soon as each hour of one's life has died, it embodies itself in some material object, as do the souls of the dead in certain folk-stories, and hides there. There it remains captive, captive forever unless we should happen on the object, recognize what lies within, call it by its name, and so set it free." This week, practice being a "namer." Recognize what lies deep within the objects you come in contact with, and try to conjure up a name that fits. Write a poem about a name you came up with that you find particularly inspiring.
"I thought we were going to get / the end of the story this afternoon. / I was mistaken." Based on the poem "Some Small Room for Surprise" by Jen Karetnick, with music by Elan Hickler, this video was filmed for the Poetry Storehouse.
In this clip, from the satellite-radio show Theme Time Radio Hour, Bob Dylan reads Walt Whitman's poem "I Hear America Singing." Here's to a happy, healthy, creative, and inspired Independence Day!
Avant-garde artist, performer, and writer Barbara Rosenthal superimposes curious text on 35mm slides to create a series of three postcards. Paired with melancholy music, the piece captures a glimpse of a much larger story brewing just beneath the surface. Rosenthal has kept a lifelong journal since age eleven—the subject of several international exhibitions.
